“That was the plan.”
“A plan that ended up with him bleeding out in a dive bar during a cross fire between local criminals,” Midas pointed out. He’d found the “official” report on the incident, apparently.
“Yes. I wasn’t supposed to return, but between my sudden appearance in a place I ‘officially’ shouldn’t be, his going UA, and him full of bullets, it created an international incident that had to be cleaned up.
“What resulted was my mother being moved yet again, and a scramble about what to do with the two of us. They had time to deal with Ka-Bar since he spent almost six months recovering in a hospital.
“For me, they didn’t feel safe putting me back in a regular unit, so it was determined I should be ‘punished.’ They couldn’t give me a dishonorable discharge because of my immunity clause, so instead they decided to assign me something possibly more dangerous than what I’d already been doing. They sent me to a black site with instructions to test its security. If I managed to get out alive, there’d be a fake capture, and I’d be sent to another one.”
Demon whistled.
“Damn,” TB said with a shudder, “that’s cold.”
“How long was that supposed to last?” Midas asked.
“Until I got killed escaping or couldn’t get out, I guess. There was no end date on it.”
God swore, pushing away from the table to rise and stalk to the front of the room. He whipped around to face the table. “Fine. We go get your mother, then set her up in a new location, preferably overseas. We put protection on her. But mark my words, Steel. We will be having a conversation about this secret, which it seems my team leader knew about and didn’t see fit to tell me. I’m kicking somebody’s ass today.”
Waters and Steel exchanged a look.
“Steel’s mother is safe enough for now,” Waters said.
“Define ‘enough,’ Waters,” God said through clenched teeth.
“We… Cherry and I… moved her to a memory care facility. Place is tighter than Fort Knox, and we put extremely strict measures in place for visitors’ and employees’ access. I have a trio of our traditional contract guys on guard duty as orderlies on the payroll, and her main nurse lives on-site. Former Navy. They’d have to blow a hole in the place to get her out of there.”
“Which they just might do,” God mumbled.
“Memory care facility?” Nemo asked.
“Her dementia has advanced to the final stage,” Steel explained. For the first time in all his years at Tribe, he fidgeted under God’s scrutiny. “I went to see her a few months ago. I wanted to see her before she passed.” He paused and shifted in his chair again. “It’s been some time since I’ve been there to check on her.”
God crunched the sucker in his mouth. Somehow, the sound reverberated with an anger all its own. “Some time?!”
Now things were really going to get uncomfortable. “I took a little detour on my way home from my escort project to Chicago. I was there for less than twenty minutes. Snuck in, snuck out. She didn’t even know who I was.”
God tossed the now-naked sucker stick onto the table and pulled a new one out of his pocket. He tore off the wrapper, and it joined the stick.
“Goddammit, Steel! Did it ever occur to you that making contact was an extremely stupid thing to do?”
His boss looked as if he were about to burst into flames. No one in the room appeared to be breathing.
“How many times have you been to see her?”
He shrugged. “Once a year since you hired me. Sometimes twice.”
“Goddammit!” Their boss turned to face the telescreen, hishands running through his hair and threading together at the back of his head.
“No one saw me,” he said.
“But they did.” Demon spoke up for the first time. “At least one of the visits, anyway. The Salieri saw you. Cherry mentioned in her debriefing after St. Lucia that Zion Norton had a picture of you in what looked like a small town. He didn’t take it himself, so they know where she is as well.”
“Mierda!I forgot. Waters, I have less than forty hours to get there.”
“And why would that be?” God barked.
Another look passed between Waters and Steel.
